French actor and director Mathieu Kassovitz is in a "worrying" condition after a motorbike accident in the Paris region on Sunday, authorities said.
The 56-year-old "La Haine" director was on a motorcycle training course at the time, a police source told AFP.
He was taken to hospital in Kremlin-Bicetre said authorities in Essonne, south of the French capital.
The filmmaker was at the race track to take advanced driving lessons on his motorcycle. He fell violently from the two-wheeler he was driving alone. Witnesses to the accident, including the actor's driving instructor, are currently being interviewed, according to the public prosecutor's office, Le Monde said.
Kassovitz wrote, directed and starred in La Haine at the age of 27, alongside Vincent Cassel, Hubert Koundé and Saïd Taghmaoui. The film follows three men over 24 hours after a riot in Paris and won Kassovitz the best director prize at Cannes film festival. It also won the César for best film, France’s equivalent of the Oscars, The Guardian reported.
Kassovitz also starred as the love interest Nino in Amélie; a Mossad explosives expert in Steven Spielberg’s Munich; and more recently as the lead in the French spy thriller series The Bureau, which has been a hit around the world.
In his most recent film, Visions, he plays the husband of Diane Kruger, an airline pilot who begins to have an affair with her ex-girlfriend. The film premiered at the Angoulême Francophone film festival two weeks ago, The Guardian added.
According to Le Monde, Mathieu Kassovitz has led an eclectic career as an actor, director and producer since the 1990s. In 1995, he directed La Haine, a black-and-white film about police violence and the banlieue, which made a name for the actor Vincent Cassel. The film bagged him an award at Cannes. Kassovitz has also starred in dozens of films, including Jacques Audiard's A Self-Made Hero, Costa-Gavras' Amen., and Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amélie. He is currently starring in Yann Gozlan's thriller Visions, alongside Diane Kruger, which opens in cinemas on Wednesday, Le Monde noted.
(With inputs from AFP, Le Monde & The Guardian.)
